The First Omaha Blog Co Installment

This morning I had the privilege of attending the first meetup of the Omaha Blog Co, organized by Danny of Silicon Prairie News fame. The event, held in the cozy, not-easy-to-find-for-a-suburb-guy Caffeine Dreams in Midtown Omaha, was attended by bloggers with a wide variety of backgrounds: new bloggers, personal bloggers, professional bloggers and even a "Professional Bum." It was great to meet them and start discussions about our purposes for blogging. Some blog for their friends, some for their job. Some blog for an audience, some blog as a creative outlet. And it was really a reaffirming moment for me - blogging is writing. Writer's write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Some write papers for teachers, some journal for themselves. We expose our students to different styles of writing and ask them to write in the those styles...why can't that be done online? Getting back to what we always harp on here in the Fridge - don't blog to blog, blog to write.

I'm very interested to see where this group goes. I'm continually impressed with the "creative class", frequently and proudly having their horn blown by outlets like Silicon Prairie, in and around the metro area. I'm hoping I can bring something positive to the table, albeit being an "outsider" to many of their ventures having an education background. I think there is a lot of talent in the area and think it will be a great thing to be a part of. Thanks again to everyone who was there for sharing great ideas and thoughts and to Danny for organizing! Now to double check my spelling since I let that out as a pet peeve about blog posts.

Speaking of blogging, here is a reminder about a great series posted by Steve Dembo a while back - 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger.

Omaha Blog Company Meetup #1

For those of you in the Omaha metro area, the first meetup of the Omaha Blog Company will be October 8th at 7:15 am at Caffeine Dreams. A representative from the Tech Fridge (like there's more than one) will be on hand to share the same wisdom as you have come to expect from the sporadic posting done here. More so, I'm hoping to score some good ideas from the others who show up!

Please check it out for more information.

I found out about the meetup by reading the hippest blog in Omaha, the Silicon Prairie News.

Blogging from iGoogle

After a least a dang month, the Fridge has finally taken some time to dive into the Google Reader. One neat thing I found was from Tammy Worcester's Tip of the Week. You can add a Blogger widget on your iGoogle page so that you can post from iGoogle. Great! Except...I'm not sure about links and pictures. I'm actually typing in iGoogle now and will be interested to see how the link to Tammy's page shows up. What? You thought I'd try it ahead of time on a little-known blog that I keep? What's the point??? There is no formatting bar (link was typed out with html code...who does that anymore??), which is easily the thing I would miss the most. I do think, though, that it's a widget, therefore to be used for something quick. If you think about it that way, it's a great way to post a quick blog.

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Just a follow-up, the link worked fine. The other idea I had as I was hitting the "Publish" button is that the "Save Draft" button is still right next to "Publish" in the iGoogle widget. Therefore, you could type out your whole post in iGoogle, save it, then go into Blogger when you have more time later to add links, pics, etc.

Cleaning up the Fridge

It was high time to clean out the Fridge a little. I've been following Steve Dembo's 30 Days to a Being a Better Blogger, and while I've made a few changes here and there due to his posts, Day 13 has been by far the biggest change.

I have added and added and added to my sidebar, giving you EVERY SINGLE PLACE that I am. That has made for a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnngggggggggg sidebar. But thanks to Day 13, I have found Retaggr, the all in one sidebar item. With Retaggr, I get all of my information into one little pop up bar. Because it combines Twitter, Skype, Diigo, Google Reader, etc., I can take multiple items off of my sidebar, which was getting to be almost twice as long as my front page posts.

So, my suggestion is to a) catch up with Steve's posts and b) if nothing else, skip to day 13 and check out Retaggr. It'll make your blog so much cleaner and spiffier.

Picture taken from Steve's blog.

K-12 Online Conference

The 2008 K-12 Online Conference began today. It is quite an interesting concept. It's free to "attend." The best part is that no lines at the airport of "trash can" views from the hotel room. The two easiest ways are to subscribe via Twitter or their blog. Each session, given by many "big names" in ed tech, are generally videos that are less than an hour that you can watch on your own time. What I've done is put a star and shared them in my Google Reader so that I can hit the ones that I want when the time allows. Hopefully we'll share some of our favorites next week!

Live Blog tonight

Our friends at the South Titan Government blog will be live blogging during the presidential debate tonight. All students are encouraged to participate. All adults are encouraged to tune in!

Live Blogging in Class?

A great article showed up via the Assorted Stuff blog. A student is being reprimanded for blogging and Tweeting about her class...her journalism class. The class name: "Reporting Gen Y." Is it a bad thing? I have felt bad for the presenter about the live blogging during a presentation. Especially when they are Ustreaming, the comments and back channel sometimes seems a little out of control. I know this issue was mentioned during NECC, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised that it has come to this. Should a student be able to live blog or tweet during a class? Does it take away from what's going on? I don't feel I pay complete attention during a presentation if I'm more worried about the live blog. But I don't know if it is a bad thing. With all of the focus from major media outlets of spreading user generated content (or what I like to call cheap labor), we shouldn't be surprised that it has made it into education. I'd love to hear how you feel about that. 

T It Up! South Titan Govt Blog Wins!

Congratulations to the South Titan Government Blog for winning the Bloggers Choice Award for the Ed in '08 Bloggers Summit!
It is a well deserved award. Mr. Keller understands high school students and what it takes to engage them in our district curriculum. It has been such a great time working with him this year and can't wait to see what he cooks up for next year!
Be sure to read his "acceptance speech."

Vote for the South High Government Blog

One of the Fridge's colleagues has his blog, the South High Government Blog, up for the Ed In '08 Blog Award, to be announced at the Blogger Summit May 14-15. Please vote today!

Classroom 2.0 Blog Share

Classroom 2.0 member Lynn asked for members to share links to their blog. My first thought was to add everyone who contributed...but then there ended up being 14 pages of replies. A little too much for the sidebar, so we'll look through the posts and find some good stuff.